<p>I'm currently a HS senior and I got rejected by all of my colleges except for my safety and U of M (still waiting for the notice) mainly due to not having a green card. I'm going to guess that there's a 25% chance that my dad will finally come up with a green card within the next year... Lived in the U.S. for 9+ years... (don't ask....)</p>
<p>Our intention as a family right now is for me to go to college or transfer next year. when I settle down, my parents go back to china and leave me on my own, so I would probably look for a private school with a lot of financial aid... But the story is a little more complex than that I presume.</p>
<p>HS stuff:
current GPA - dropped from 3.83 uw to 3.76 due to a D+ in theoretical linear algebra, will probably drop further since I'm going to f*** up some more college classes this semester. But the policy with my classes is that I can retake the onces I screwed up and the new grades will replace the old ones, which is exactly what I'm going to do to get my GPA up to where it was. (summer classes)</p>
<p>I took the most challenging courseload I could. By the end of this year (or at least by the end of the summer), I will be completed with all the college math courses that I will need to take for the rest of my life.</p>
<p>SATs: 1950 reasoning, 29 ACT (24 reading, 28 english... don't ask), 800 math II and 740 chem. I will be retaking my standardized tests and try to get the best possible score this time.</p>
<p>ECs:
mostly sports - 4 yrs of cross country (2 varsity letters); 2 yrs of soccer (varsity sophomore year); tennis junior year (JV... I sucked); and varsity track in senior year (coach says I have potential ^^)
science olympiad 9-12 (a **** load of gold metals from state competitions; team made state my 9-11 years) it's Iowa, so SO isn't competitive at all for that matter
Math circle, **which includes a bunch of math practices and competitions in the great plains region. (individual state qualifier 9-12)
**Ping pong club 10-12 (starter and leader) The club kinda died my senior year. Right now it's pretty much nonexistent
Some volunteering, tutoring and stuff. There maybe more, but I can't really remember.</p>
<p>I took like 8-9 APs and got 3 5's, 3 4's and 2-3 3's</p>
<p>That's about it.</p>
<p>Tell me what can I do from now up to my college freshmen year to make me appealing to the ad coms. I'm considering on making a fundraiser along with a part time job. All of this will come with a heavy courseload.</p>
<p>The reason I want to get out of here, is because I want to sort of start my life over. I have taken a lot of classes at Iowa State, and although it's #35 in engineering, I still hate it here.</p>
<p>So those of you who are willing to give me advice on my mission, please give me advice about how I can improve each part of my application to the best they can be given my HS records.</p>
<p>grades?
recommendations?
ECs?
awards? (not much for me)
leadership?
etc...</p>
<p>dream colleges: Stanford, MIT, Columbia (New York!!! always wanted to go there), any other engineering school with a great school atmosphere.</p>
<p>this is your chance to either feed my ego or crush it
$50 million to those of you who bothered to read this far
thanks!</p>